Organizations are preparing to make adjustments for the future of work, and this largely includes the adoption of a hybrid work arrangement.
However, a hybrid approach is not binary. While at first glance, hybrid could mean either working at home or in the office, but it can be more than just two options.
Over the last several months, work preferences have changed as a larger amount of workers have had the opportunity to experiment with different arrangements.
“For employers and employees, we’ve been stuck in a very traditional bipolar debate between office and home, whereas there’s lots of choice and it’s not just about physical space,” said Chris Kane, former head of corporate real estate at BBC. “Work is moving from being process work performed in an office, to knowledge work, which can be done in a whole raft of settings.”
This does not indicate that the office is dead. Rather, it is among the many choices of work arrangements that workers will have in the future.
Simply having two options is not flexible enough. For instance, many schools have started letting parents choose to either send their children to school or keep them at home for virtual learning.
However, what if the child cannot learn effectively at home, but is at high-risk of contracting COVID-19? Or what if a parent cannot be home to help their children with their homework, but do not feel safe sending them to school?
Instead of providing two seemingly impossible choices, companies should be more flexible in what works best for their employees.
